Finally got round to sorting the seals on my 1.6 this afternoon, all in all it took me nearly 5 hours from preparation to finish - longer than I expected lol. I spent a lot of time removing and scraping all of the old seal/sticky adhesive from the door carriers, and also gunk which has materialized from mixing with leaked water at the bottom of the doors.
The butyl tape was a bit of a pain in the arse too with how sticky it is and how much it canstretch, especially on a hot day like today (I wish I had placed it in the fridge overnight as mentioned on DubSteve's
guide but I forgot
). The front doors I think were a success. The job for the fronts was near enough no trouble at all (apart from cleaning all of the old seal and the crap that it left on the carriers)
The rear doors, well... when I removed both door cards I was in for a surprise, it was obvious that one of the previous owners had tried/got someone else to try and sort them... and made a bit of a bodge with it. They had used a really tough black sealant that just did not seem to want to budge when trying to peel it off (this particular sealant had also deteriorated in the past as it was still leaking water at the bottom of the doors), this black horrible sealant though was just all over the place and felt like dry tar when trying to remove it off the door itself and also acted a bit like glue with how much it made the carrier stick to the door. I just managed to do the drivers rear side and using the butyl to seal it back up the best I can.
Finally got round to the last hurdle of the job, the rear passenger door. This one had also been bodged up with the horrible black sealant in the past but didn't look too bad, managed to remove all of the bolts holding the carrier in place... apart from one. The black sealant had got in the screw hole and was really holding the bolt in place, so much so... it sheared off when trying to undo it
I couldn't even use my flat headed screw driver to break the seal between the carrier and the door because the black sealant acted like a glue. I decided in the end before I ended up doing some damage was just to use the butyl to seal the outer edge of the carrier carefully and hope for the best - just to add as well that I've noticed since owning my Leon that the rear passenger door never has leaked that much water compared to the other doors.
So, that was how I spent my Saturday afternoon and I really hope it pays off! We will see when it next rains.
Just for everyone's reference, here is the butyl sealant that I got off ebay:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BOLT-ON-P..._Body_Shop_Supplies_Paint&hash=item33791b3ab1
A massive thank you to both andy tech & DubSteve for their guides, I really couldn't do without you guys. I owe you both a beer!
- Liam